HARMONICS - Legendary origins

Tradition holds that D’ni inherited its harmonic system from that developed in Garternay long before the Great Exodus. As the tale goes, a public Age had been written to commemorate the royal nuptials. Visitors to the Age were delighted by the “calming and healthful sounds that ride the tails of sweet breezes,” an unusual but benign feature the Age’s Author had not planned and could not explain. Citizens crowded the public libraries in order to experience the strange noises, which were reputed, among other things, to heal sickness and calm the minds of the distracted. Word reached the King, who promptly cut off public access and claimed the Age for his own private use. Quite opposite its reputed salutary effects, the King became wholly enraptured by the beautiful sounds, forgot his nation, and one day disappeared into the Age, never to be found again.

The Age was promptly quarantined and given to Maintainers for study. One day, an official examining the Age’s distinctive cliffs noticed the sound’s particular strength there. He discovered that a local plant had strung fine, fibrous threads across the cliffs’ natural cavities; as the wind blew across them, the strings vibrated and cavities amplified the mysterious sounds. Bringing measurements back to D’ni, it was discovered that the threads were in a constant ratio to one another—from these ratios, the harmonics of Garternay’s ancient music arose.

While the tale seems somewhat apocryphal, more a moral for the young D’ni nation than bona fide music history, early texts always employ it to enter into a more technical discussion of how these ratios translate into the musical pitches and intervals that comprise D’ni music.

Next: Major and minor intervals